OpenOffice 3 has PDF import, native Aqua UI, and Tara Reid

There’s been quite a bit of buzz recently after it was announced that OpenOffice 3 was due in September. It seems, however, most people still aren’t aware of what’s in store.

We love OpenOffice.org, hereby referred to as OpenOffice like normal people do. We like the fact it does pretty much everything we need for free, we like the out-of-the box PDF and Flash support, its better-than-Word ability to work with large documents, and the joys of using a standard file format that’s actually, you know, a standard.

But the Openpoffice.org website is a rather scary place. We managed to find this conference presentation lurking in the shadows before running away in fear of mid 90’s web design. Here’s the best bits:

Native Mac OS X Aqua version

The Mac finally gets a native OpenOffice. This has been going on for a while - you can already download the native OS X OpenOffice 2.3 beta, but this time it’s official.
Sure, NeoOffice already does this, but OpenOffice 3 for Mac is new code that will be released and updated at the same time as the Windows and Linux versions. Speaking of Windows, Vista users also get some kind of unspecified ‘integration’ for 3.0.

New PIM

We love our Pimms with ginger ale, lemonade, citrus fruit, cucumber and ice. OpenOffice 3 has a different recipe:

• Email
• Calendaring with meeting invites and free/busy publishing
• Task management
• Server connectivity to CalDAV servers, Google Calendar and Sun Calendar Server, as well as the obligatory iCal support. Alas, no mention of Zimbra.
• Specifically touted by OpenOffice developers as an ‘Outlook replacement’

Support for Everything

Remember showing your mates the Flash export in OpenOffice 2 Impress? Well drag them round again, as OpenOffice 3 takes it a step further.

• PDF files can be imported into Draw and edited with all their layout intact. Yum.
• The whole Openoffice suite can save ‘hybrid’ PDF documents that can be viewed as PDFs or edited as OpenDocument files.
• Edit wikis directly from OpenOffice without learning Yet Another Needless Wiki Markup Format.
• WordPress and Movabletype blogs can be edited too.
• Support for MS Office 2007 XML. Microsoft confusingly calls this ‘Office Open XML’. We call it Stop Naming Your Unstable Undocumented Shitty Format To Sound Like Ours Thanks.
• Math fetishists can enjoy enhanced Latex support.

Extension Manager

Openoffice 3 will have simple Firefox-like extensions. There’s a wide variety of existing OpenOffice extensions already available:

• Fax support (both send and receive)
• Google docs integration
• Remote control for presentations via your bluetooth remote
• Version control with Subversion
• Voice commentaries for presentations

Reports

Beancounters and thier minions can now make pretty documents from databases using Base’s new reporting engine.

Tara Reid

This release marks the appearance of Tara Reid in OpenOffice. Witnesses report the anorexic booze hound stumbled into OOs build system by accident, and will now live inside OpenOffice translating documents into a language only spoken when you’ve drunk 8 bottles of vodka.

Unfortunately in current betas, when this feature is enabled, OpenOffice smells vaguely of pee.

So that’s it for OpenOffice 3. Betas are arriving in the next few months, and the final should be done by September.

What else would we like to see?

• Well, like a lot of Open Source projects, a decent website for people to see and download the damn software, and not look at pictures of skanky pidgeons.
• You may have noticed that OpenOffice’s own templates are, well, crap. There’s a big market for Office templates out there, which inevitably work just fine in OpenOffice too. Most of these companies would be happy to Open Source a template or two for inclusion in OpenOffice in exchange for a link back to their websites as the template author. OpenOffice gets some decent templates, and the template authors get to show off their work.

OpenOffice 3 新特性

当OpenOffice 3宣布九月即将发布之后，谣言四起。看起来很多人不知道它会带来什么。

我们喜欢OpenOffice.org，和平常的人一样这里OpenOffice.org特指OpenOffice软件。我们喜欢的是它满足了几乎我们所有的需要，并且是免费的。我们喜欢它提供的pdf输出和flash支持，还有它比Word更胜一筹的处理大文档的能力，以及使用标准文件格式的快感。众所周知，那确实是一个标准。

但是，OpenpOffice.org 网站真是一个吓人的地方。我们设法找到了这个隐藏在暗处的会议报告，以免被OpenOffice.org九十年代中期的网页设计风格给吓跑。下面是精华部分：

原生Mac OS X Aqua版本
Mac终于有了原生的OpenpOffice。这已成为事实挺长时间了－－你已经可以下载原生OS X OpenOffice 2.3测试版，但是这一次是官方正式的。
当然，NeoOffice已经做到这点了。OpenpOffice 3的Mac版会是在Windows和Linux平台上同时发布和更新的全新代码。说到Windows，Vista用户也会得到一个未指定的“整合”3.0版。

新的PIM(个人信息管理 Personal information manager)
我们喜欢pimms（一种酒）对生姜水，柠檬水，橙汁还有冰。 OpenpOffice 3有着不同的配方：

• Email
• 日历，带有会议助理和空闲/忙碌状态提示
• 任务管理
• 服务互通性，可以连接CalDAV服务、Google日历和Sun日历服务，当然必要的iCal支持也不会少。可惜啊，没有提到Zimbra。
• OpenOffice开发者的专家推荐：“Outlook 替代”

支持所有格式
还记得向同事们炫耀OpenOffice 2的Flash导出功能的深刻印象吗？哇！再把他们拉过来一次吧，因为OpenOffice 3又前进了一步。

• PDF文件可以导入Draw并在所有布局未受损的保证下编辑。太美了。
• 所有的OpenOffice套件都可以保存“混合”PDF文件，这种文件可以作为PDF查看或作为ODF格式编辑。
• 直接从OpenOffice编辑维基条目，而不用去学习不必要的维基编排格式。
• 离线发布博客，支持WordPress和Movabletype。
• 支持微软Office 2007 XML。微软莫名其妙的把这叫做“Office Open XML”。我们建议微软停止把自己不稳定无证明的垃圾格式命名成这样，发音和我们差不多，谢了。
• 增强型Latex数学工具支持。

扩展管理
OpenOffice 3会提供类似Firefox的简单插件。有大量OpenOffice插件已经可用了：

• 传真支持（发送/接收）
• Google文件整合
• 通过蓝牙遥控演示
• 版本控制（SVN）
• 演示的语音注释

报表
爱省钱的老板和他们的奴才们现在可以使用Base的新报表引擎制作出精美的文件了。

Tara Reid （美女一名)
这一版本的发布标志着OpenOffice中的Tara Reid将要出现。有目击者报道，一条厌食并喝醉的猎犬意外闯入了OO的开发系统，并且现在就驻扎在OpenOffice内部，把文件转化成只有在你喝了8瓶伏特加后才会说的语言。

不幸的是在当前测试版中，当激活这些新特性时，OpenOffice表现得心不在焉。

这就是OpenOffice 3的情况了。测试版本会在接下来几个月出现，而最终版会在九月完成。

作为用户，我们还想看到别的什么呢？

• 哇，像很多其他的开源项目一样，提供一个体面的网站，可以让人们浏览、下载那该死的软件，而不是去看讨厌的鸽子图。
• 你可能已经注意到了，OpenOffice自带的模板，哇，真是烂得可以。Office模板之外有广阔的市场，它们在OpenOffice上必然也会工作得不错。大多数这些公司会很乐意给OpenOffice一或两个模板，OpenOffice只需给出到他们网站或模板作者的链接作为交换。OpenOffice搞到些像样的模板，模板作者得到机会炫耀他们的作品，两全其美。